Amid the sound and the fury of Trump v. Clinton, less attention has been paid this election cycle to that other branch of government, the U.S. Senate, where the results could mean a change of party control. Three Southern states – Louisiana, Florida, and North Carolina – are leaning, but not locks, for Republican candidates. Voter turnout, experts say, will be the determining factor.

Louisiana

Louisiana has been a solidly Republican state in recent decades. In the last senatorial election in 2014, Rep. Bill Cassidy defeated Sen. Mary Landrieu, a conservative democrat and three-term senator. This year’s race features 24 candidates seeking to replace Republican Sen. David Vitter, who announced in 2015 that he would not run for re-election.

Most experts see the Louisiana senate race going to the Republicans. “I’ve been fascinated by the Republican turnout,” Donathan Brown, a Fulbright scholar and co-author of Voting Rights Under Fire: The Continuing Struggle for People of Color, told Occupy.com. “Comparing 2008 to 2016, the number of eligible voters (in Louisiana) has doubled."

In such a solidly red state, the race for Vitter's seat would seem a lock for Republicans. But this year has already defied political expectations, and Louisiana Democrats are now seeking to follow up their 2015 gubernatorial win with another political surprise.

In last year's race, Sen. Vitter was the frontrunner, and most experts six months prior to the November election saw him, or one of his Republican opponents, as the likely successor to the term-limited Gov. Bobby Jindal. But Republican candidates proceeded to engage in intra-party attacks all the way up to the general election, and when the dust settled, Sen. Vitter faced a runoff against the only prominent Democrat in the race, John Bell Edwards. Vitter, an unpopular candidate who failed to receive support from his defeated Republican rivals, lost to Edwards, and announced immediately after his defeat that he would not seek re-election as senator. This fall, anything is possible in Louisiana.

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Florida

In Florida, much of the focus on election night will be for the presidential election, but the state also has a senate seat up for grabs – a race that incumbent Marco Rubio is currently leading, but as Kyle Kondik, managing editor of "Sabato's Crystal Ball,” wrote in a June blog post prior to Rubio’s entry into the race: “Interestingly, if Rubio ran he would in some ways be tying his fate to his one-time rival Trump: If Trump won Florida, Rubio would almost certainly win. If Trump lost Florida, Rubio probably would still have a chance, but he might not have much margin for error.”

Like most places, Florida’s population is more conservative in the rural areas and more liberal in the urban areas. But unlike many other states, Florida is not clearly divided between a conservative north and a liberal south. One of the less discussed variables this election season is the role that Cuban Americans will play as a voting bloc. With about 7 percent of the state's population, a history of siding with Republican candidates, and factoring in Sen. Rubio's Cuban decent, it seems this would be a reliable group for Republicans to tap into. However, younger Cubans are more likely to be Democrats, and in a July 2015 presidential primary poll, more Cuban Americans supported Jeb Bush than Rubio.

“Being as close as it is, there will be many demographics to watch for as we draw closer to November," said Brown. "In 2012, for instance, Obama edged out Romney in Florida by a margin of less than 80,000 votes.”

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North Carolina

North Carolina’s senate race is, unsurprisingly, also tight. According to the Raleigh, North Carolina-based Public Policy Polling, “We continue to find (Republican Senator Richard Burr) with just a narrow lead over Deborah Ross for reelection – 40/37, with Libertarian Sean Haugh at 5 percent."

Burr is unpopular, with only 30 percent of NC voters approving the job he is doing, versus 40 percent who disapprove. "That makes voters open to a change," said the group. "But Ross is currently unknown with 62 percent of voters having no opinion about her one way or another. They're open to the possibility of replacing Burr but don't know enough about Ross yet to decide if they think she would be an upgrade.”

Like in Louisiana and Florida, North Carolina's senate voting result depends in large part on the turnout for the presidential election. The wild card in the election is the July 29 unanimous ruling from the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, which declared North Carolina’s voter ID law to be unconstitutional. There was a push by jurists to rule on voter rights cases in their court sooner rather than later, in order to allow time for local officials to oversee the elections. This also gives democratic campaigns the green light to get more voters to the polls.

“North Carolina and Florida will have turnout efforts courtesy of the Clinton campaign, so the African-American electorate should be larger than it otherwise would be,” Robert G. Boatright, professor of political science at Clark University, told Occupy.com.

With three months to go before the election, candidates will not only have to deliver a message that a majority of voters can relate to, but will need to mobilize their supporters in large numbers. While polls can provide indications about a likely result, in a closely contested election, polls and ratings matter little unless those individuals cast their vote.

“There has been a reversal of the Great Migration," added Brown, "which can do some interesting things to local elections."

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